Anvil Strikes Fast As Congo Mining Potential Opens Up

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Dikulishi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is home to one of the highest grade undeveloped copper-silver deposits in the world. Anvil Mining (ASX:AVL) (Perth, Australia) has fast tracked the plant and innovative delivery system to have the first concentrate scheduled for delivery by August.

The first $5.7 million stage of the mine's development will treat ore at a rate of 250,000 tons per annum and produce 35/40,000 tons of concentrate per year grading at approximately 40% copper and 1,230 grams per ton (g/t) silver. Annual metal production from the first stage using an open pit mine and a heavy media separation plant (HMS) will be 14,000 tons of cathode copper per annum and 1.1 million ounces of silver. The second stage of the project will add a ball mill and flotation circuits followed by stage three, funded out of project cash flows, which will see the mine go underground. The forecasted operating cost for copper cathode production is $0.36 per pound. This will put Dikulushi well within the lowest quartile of the world copper production cost curve. Stage two onwards should produce very high grade concentrate averaging 60% copper and 1,935 grams per ton of silver.

Concentrate will be carried by a 48 x 10 meter barge from Dikulishi on the western side of Lake Mweru to Nchelenge on the Zambian eastern side of the lake. The barge is powered by two 150 HP Z-Drives fabricated by Thrustmasters (Houston, Texas). The 50 kilometer access road from Dikulishi to the docking site is undergoing laterite surface upgrading to facilitate the movement of concentrate trucks. Each barge trip will take six trailers loaded with 30 tons of concentrate, which will then go by road to Mufilira on Zambia's Copperbelt for smelting and refining. Currently the 250 ton payload barge is being used to convey heavy equipment and containers across the lake. Anvil picked up the completed sixteen sections of the barge at Richards Bay in South Africa last year for the keen price of $28,000. The commissioning client had not taken delivery. Transporting the 11 ton sections to Lake Merwu cost another $75,000. A mine site laboratory in four containers is en route from Perth and the 35 tons per hour modular HMS plant was constructed in Johannesburg, South Africa and after testing, dismantling and transporting, is being readied for operation on site. Four 375 KW power generating units are being mounted on concrete plinths.

Prospects for mining investment in the resource rich DRC have recently improved with the World Bank active in modernizing the country's mining legislation, which should be enacted this year. The IMF and the UN are also pro-actively involved. The Inter-Congolese Dialogue, which took place at Sun City in South Africa earlier this year also, indicated some direction settlement moves aimed at the political and armed strife that has plagued the Congo region as a whole.

Anvil has exploration properties in the DRC of around 43,000 square kilometers with copper, precious, and platinum group metals potential. They are one of a number of players in the sector, including global majors and the World Bank, who recently met with the DRC's ministry of mines.